A report in to Western Australia’s wealth distribution has confirmed the resources boom has created more cashed up blue collar workers than anywhere else in the country.

The Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre report Sharing the Boom: the distribution of income wealth in WA released in Perth on Wednesday shows high income households in WA were twice as likely to be headed by a tradesman, or “tradie", than those in the rest of the country.

“This reflects the commonly held belief that ‘tradies’ are among those who have benefited from the boom," Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre director Professor Alan Duncan said.

However, the report warns the gap between the state’s rich and poor had widened, highlighting the inequality of the resources boom that significantly increased living costs.

The report shows 23 per cent, or more than one-fifth, of high-income households were headed by a person holding a trade certificate III or IV as their highest qualification during 2011-12.

This compares to just 16 per cent for the rest of the country.

“These findings suggest that not only do you not have to head to university to make it into the higher realms of the income distribution, but also that the return is likely to be greater, given that the cost of acquiring a trade certificate is almost always lower than that of any university degree," the report states.

The report defines high income households as the 20 per cent of households with the highest incomes. In 2011-12 these households had an average income of $1963 per week in WA and $1705 throughout the rest of Australia.

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It’s not all bad news for those who returned to university to further their studies.

The report shows the amount of high income earners holding postgraduate qualifications doubled from 8.8 per cent to 17.1 per cent between 2005-06 and 2011-12.

“These patterns are likely to reflect the demand for highly skilled postgraduates, particularly in the mining sector, with engineers dominating highly paid positions," the report said.

While the WA unemployment rate has remained relatively low during the past decade not everyone has enjoyed significant wages growth.

WA’s average weekly ordinary time earnings are 20 per cent higher than the national average but the gap between the state’s richest and poorest households widened during the boom, peaking during 2009-10.

“Our findings show that the poorest 10 per cent of households in WA have failed to keep pace not only with the richest households, but also with those ‘typical’ households on middle incomes," the report states.

The richest 10 per cent of households in WA had around 3.8 times the income of the poorest 10 per cent of households in 2003-04 but this climbed to 4.8 times in 2009-10 before slipping to 4.5 times in 2011-12.

“Low-income households are falling behind all others at a faster rate in WA than Australia, which raises concerns about those living in these households and the decreasing standard of living that they are likely to be experiencing relative to the rest of WA’s population," the report says.

The gap however may be beginning to close with the report noting that the state’s highest earnings have seen a steep reduction in income as the resource boom cools.